The importance of place

Kneehigh’s outdoor performances had a significant impact on the style and techniques used to tell stories. Performing outside requires less reliance on text, more on visual storytelling, and the use of music and sound. Sue Hill describes the style as “almost operatic in scale”. 

Performing in outdoor spaces alters the relationship between actor and audience. Actors can move in amongst the audience, directing their attention to something, or away from something else and characters encourage the audience to be as mischievous and curious as they are.

Kneehigh performances have taken place in diverse locations: where the red river meets the sea at Godrevy, the old gunpowder works at Kennal Vale, wild walks in woods and on clifftops  in the company’s vast Asylum tent, in the turbine halls of Johannesburg.

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Kneehigh’s early work combined entertaining shows for local communities in the evening with daytime theatre-in-education shows. The company rehearsed late at night in old halls, cramped rooms, or outside spaces generating playfulness, anarchy and inspiration. 

Whether performing at the National Theatre on the Olivier stage, at the Minack Theatre in Cornwall, in London’s West End, or in Aleppo, Syria, Kneehigh engaged with audiences exchanging energy, stories, excitement and culture.

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You can see the roots of Kneehigh in this video which shows the company’s strong roots in Cornwall and the creation of The Asylum.

Going to the Barns for the first time was mind-blowing. It changed everything for me as an artist and as a person, that there was this world of creativity, of storytelling right by the sea.

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